The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology
Table of Contents
Educators Guide
The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology recovers a new regional archive of “black prairie” literature, and includes writing that ranges from work by nineteenth-century black fur traders and pioneers, all of it published here for the first time, to contemporary writing of the twenty-first century.
This anthology establishes a new black prairie literary tradition and transforms inherited understandings of what prairie literature looks and sounds like. It collects varied and unique work by writers who were both conscious and unconscious of themselves as black writers or as “prairie” people. Their letters, recipes, oral literature, autobiographies, rap, and poetry- provide vivid glimpses into the reality of their lived experiences and give meaning to them.
The book includes introductory notes for each writer in non-specialist language, and notes to assist readers in their engagement with the literature. This archive and its supporting text offer new scholarly and pedagogical possibilities by expanding the nation’s and the region’s archives. They enrich our understanding of black Canada by bringing to light the prairies’ black histories, cultures, and presences.
Forthcoming
Companion Volume to the Black Prairie Archives: Critical Readings in the Black Prairie Archives. In revision and under contract to Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Call and Response-ability: Black Canadian Art and the Politics of Relation, co-edited with Winfried Siemerling. McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming 2026.
Karina Vernon 